The Graveyard Shift
by HasFar2Go
Summary: Meet Elizabeth Keen, involuntary Paranormal Criminal Profiler. (No, she didn't know that was an actual 'thing', either.) A Halloween AU Blacklist fic.
1. Chapter 1

**Still don't own any of this. This fic is just a little multi chapter Halloween treat, with plenty of material inspired by some great spooky films. **

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><p>"<strong>A<strong>nd this man? He checks out?" Harold Cooper's eyes darted from the screen to the agent standing next to him bathed in light from the TV screen. The younger man's gaze was focused on that screen, and his own hand in the film footage.

Donald Ressler looked at his boss after half a second of distraction, eyes still on the screen, and the clip filmed earlier in the day, in an interview room. "Him? Absolutely. He's been working for the FBI for a few years now, never any issues. Near-perfect accuracy with his work. Nothing's ever followed him home before...until now. He called to report the activity at 2 am this morning.

"He's shook up. Says the spirit won't leave him alone - started knocking things around in his house. They called me in when this guy was in the middle of a sentence and started repeating three codenames for operations we had suspected Red was involved in. Like a loop for five minutes straight, no stopping. These are operations that have never seen the light of day and have never been spoken of in public before."

Cooper noticed the movement then, just at the corner of the screen; even as he continued to talk to the Medium in the clip, Ressler's hand had begun to move the pen on the legal notepad. The movement was slow, barely noticeable really, but when the pen drew a long line underneath a word and flew out of the agent's hand, it got the attention of both men, and they clamored to push up and out of their chairs, staring at the pad.

Harold Cooper looked down at that notepad, now on his desk, and the words on the page.

"Alright. Let's find her, and see what he wants to say."

The page in his grip had six words in large, capital letters, crudely sprawled.

_I SPEAK __ONLY__ WITH ELIZABETH KEEN._

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><p><strong>I<strong>t was Hudson's frantic barking that woke her up, and not her alarm; it was easy to see in those few seconds alone that it wasn't going to be a good day.

She hushed her dog, a useless act, while she rolled over to check the time on the alarm clock, fully aware from the sunlight in her room it had happened again.

The alarm clock was unplugged.

"Babe, what time is it?" Liz made a frantic grab for her husband's wrist to check for herself on his watch. "Oh shit!"

Beside her, Tom mumbled as he sat up, immediately alert but bleary eyed. "What time do you have to-"

Liz was already up and out of the bed, dashing into the bathroom as she frantically tried to gain control of the morning. "It's my first day! The clock-"

Tom moved around the bedroom behind her, just in her peripheral vision in the mirror - he was late for the school day as well, and Liz knew there'd be an awkward fight over the car keys in the next few minutes. "Again? I made sure it was plugged in again last night. I used the wall outlet instead of the strip thinking that was - Hudson, buddy, give it a rest. There's nothing in the corner."

"Maybe you should call the electrician?" she suggested as she buttoned her blouse.

"Yeah. I'll have him look the wiring," her husband replied, appearing in the bathroom doorway, cleaning his glasses and enviously, entirely dressed. "The lighting keeps flickering no matter how many times I check the bulbs. Maybe the subway runs under the house? That might cause vibrations."

Liz brushed her teeth and jumped into her pants, trying to focus on what she had to do to get ready. She thought she'd left this kind of stuff behind in New York. When he moved in ahead of her, settling in for the start of the school year while she finished her time at her job before her transfer, Tom had assured her this house would be their home, a good home, and there weren't any 'creepy vibes' like they had at their city apartment.

She wasn't about to tell her husband that Hudson spent a whole lot of time barking at nothing when it was just the two of them in New York. Or that unplugged alarm clocks were nothing compared to furniture being moved, and items missing and reappearing elsewhere.

This was their creepy-free, new chapter of their life. Complete with a baby, if the meeting with the adoption agency later today went well.

They were out the door in record time, and in the end, Liz cajoled Tom into letting her have the car since it was her first day.

About halfway through her drive, she realized she wasn't recognizing the streets - well, she recognized them, but they weren't on the trip to the building she was supposed to be reporting to for orientation. The GPS informed her she'd reached her destination on the right when she stopped at the parking lot for the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

The light was red, so she grabbed her phone off the seat next to her to check her calendar and immediately worried about how lost in her own thoughts she'd been in the last few days - she'd updated the calendar and programmed the GPS without remembering it.

"Get it together, Keen," she muttered as she pulled into the parking lot.

After one last look in the rearview mirror and a steadying breath, Liz put the morning behind her and stepped inside the building, feeling a small thrill as she stepped over the FBI's seal on the floor.

"Hi," she greeted the officer in the security booth, giving the woman the sunniest, friendliest smile she could muster. "My name is Elizabeth Keen. I have an appointment with…" she looked back down at the phone. "Mr. Raymond Reddington? Could you let-"

Liz never got to finish her request; the TV behind the officer flickered and dimmed for half a second, just as a SWAT team came sweeping into the lobby. Just like everyone else in the space, she looked around to see what had triggered the response.

Except for a blonde man just beyond the guards. He was staring directly at her, the smallest of smiles on his lips. Hairs on the back of her neck rose, and her stomach jolted unpleasantly.

She hadn't felt that in years, but she knew what it meant, and silently prayed it was a fluke; this was supposed to be a fresh new start for her. That was all done and behind her.

"Miss Keen?"

Liz dragged her eyes from the blonde man - she could see now that his suit was old, mid 80s, judging by the jacket - to the one addressing her. Strawberry blonde with the stern-cut features of a Ken doll, but his hand was on a very real gun at his waist.

"Agent Keen, my name is Donald Ressler. I'm going to ask you to come with us."

The dead blonde man in the corner laughed.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Don't own anything related to the Blacklist, or any of the other movies/shows/books referenced in this, either.**

**A link for the fic's 8tracks mix is on my profile page.**

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><p><strong>W<strong>ho knew the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building had conveniently located interview rooms?

The walls were painted a celery green, and dust clung to them thick and fuzzy. Liz realized the dim lighting may have been intended to intimidate as well as conceal.

She shifted in the metal chair, waiting for the FBI agent across her at the scarred, alarmingly dented table to ask the next question. So far, her answers to the questions had been mostly negative, since all of the questions were associated with the man known as Raymond Reddington.

Not that they were saying his name out loud. The name was on the paper before her, and occasionally he'd point to it. She made that mistake once, and the action figure brought to life across from her jumped all over it, insisting that they would simply refer to him as 'Red' for the rest of the conversation.

"You mean interrogation," she had corrected him, feeling a small spike of frustration.

Ressler tried to excuse the situation as a routine, voluntary questioning, but she shook her head, more than on to the truth.

"You keep looking to the window out of the corner of your eye every time I answer a question, like you're looking for someone to validate my responses."

She wondered if was some sort of wireless, next gen lie detector or something.

He stared at her.

She shrugged. "Part of my job in the mobile unit was psych assessments. I'm observant."

She sat up a little straighter, feeling like she'd gained some footing with the comment. Liz used the most authoritative voice she had, the one that caused her former coworkers to call her 'Sir'.

"Agent Ressler, like I said before several times in a dozen ways: I don't know this man. His name appeared in my calendar today for my appointment. I'm supposed to be starting my desk job on the other side of town today. What is this all about?"

He pulled a photo out of the folder under his hand, and slid it across the table towards her. She pulled it closer to diminish the glare on the glossy print from the lone lightbulb above, and suddenly hoped she was still good at controlling that jarring shock that came from seeing a ghost.

It was the man from the lobby. The photo was old, some aged and faded formal portrait in a uniform - it looked a military academy graduation portrait. He looked like a teenager, a few years younger than she'd seen him.

"Do you have a connection to the man in this photo? Your file shows you were adopted-"

Liz felt her head snap up at that, stifling a snort. "You think this _kid_ is my biological father?"

The countering question kept her from answering the first part - she wasn't sure if seeing him earlier would mean her 'no' would count as a lie.

There was a smack at the other side of the one-way glass, and they both jumped.

She hadn't even said anything yet.

"Do you have a connection to this man, Mrs. Keen?" Ressler asked again.

Liz opened her mouth, and closed it again. There was no use lying if they were remotely monitoring her answers. Her mouth felt dry and her cheeks burned.

"I...You're all going to think I'm crazy."

The man smiled politely. "Maybe not."

Liz closed her eyes as she answered, wanting to avoid the _look _she was about to receive and exhaled. "I saw him before. In the lobby."

"You mean you saw his Most Wanted poster."

Liz shook her head, wishing she could just go with what he said, but knowing there would probably be another smack at the glass. "No, I saw _him_ the lobby."

Agent Ressler's mouth formed a flat line, and it was like she could hear his thought process. First day of work in DC, and she was going to be labeled a wack-job. Fantastic.

The fingers of her right hand curled to brush against the mottled flesh of her palm.

It wasn't like she had ever said anything to anyone in New York. The last time she'd ever told anyone about what she could see was in middle school, and she'd learned her lesson very quickly about trusting people with that kind of thing; it only got you hurt, gave people a weapon against you.

The FBI agent stared at her for a moment, as if willing her to continue.

"I'm telling you the truth," she insisted. "The only reason I even knew his name was because it was in the meeting on my calendar...from an email that was sent to me for orientation."

"It wasn't in the email," Ressler argued, and pulled another page out of his folder. It was a print out of the email sent to her two weeks prior. Sure enough, the meeting was for another building, and no one was named.

She sat back in in the chair, feeling her shoulders slump, her heart thundering in her ribcage. "I don't know what to tell you."

"You can tell me this: did you develop the ability, or were you born with it?"

When she didn't answer, he continued. "Where you born with your gift, or did you develop it...near death experience, too much time playing with a Ouija board?

He kept going, leaning forward slightly. "Me, I nearly died. Got shot by a perp I was chasing down, rushed into surgery. My heart stopped at some point, and I was clinically dead for about a minute. Woke up like that kid in the Bruce Willis film."

She stared at him, trying to figure out what was really going on. A bubble of relieved laughter started in her chest and it escaped her lips. "Is this some kind of first day prank? This is some kind of Halloween thing, right?" She leaned forward, feeling like she could breathe for the first time since she'd been surrounded by the SWAT team. "I won't file a complaint with HR if we drop this now."

He opened his mouth to answer her, but there was a knuckle tap on the glass, and Ressler rose from his seat, a knee-jerk reaction. The door opened, and an older man with an air of authority entered the room. Ressler ducked his head, turning away from Liz to address the man quietly.

"Sir, I'm not sure-"

"-I'll take it from here, Agent Ressler."

The younger man cast one last glance in her direction before begrudgingly leaving the room, clearly an argument on the tip of his tongue. The newcomer walked over to the table and extended his hand, shaking hers while he sat.

"Agent Keen, I'm Assistant Director Cooper. I'm sorry for that welcoming committee earlier; when Red requested to speak to you, we weren't exactly expecting you to walk right into the building."

It felt like the carpet was ripped out from under her. It wasn't a prank, was it?

"To be perfectly honest, sir-"

He smiled warmly. "-It would be best if you were, Agent Keen. I happen to be _very_ good at knowing when someone is lying."

Suddenly she was a kid in front of her father. He used to say the same thing. She tried to swallow but found it difficult.

He knitted his fingers together before him on the table, and cleared his throat. "Now Agent Keen, I need to ask you a question, and I need you to be very honest with me: Do you believe in ghosts?"

Liz watched him watching her, feeling herself growing frustrated when she couldn't see where the conversation was going. She decided to simply go with the truth. "Yes."

"And is it fair to say you've seen some sort of first hand evidence to confirm this belief for yourself."

She licked her lips, then nodded. "Yes. Yes sir."

Ressler shifted in his seat, crossing his legs and arms and leaning back. "And when did it start for you? Seeing things that others couldn't? Hearing people no one else knew were there?"

She took a deep breath, weighing in her mind just how much she wanted to give up. "Since I could remember...before that even, I guess. But until today, I haven't had a, a flare up since college."

The Assistant Director's kind smile faltered for only a second - something she had said had struck a chord with him - but she saw it before the warm and inviting look was back and he posed the question, "What if I told you that there are others like you, a whole division of people who have abilities that set them apart from others?"

The corners of her mouth lifted, but her lips remained closed as her shoulders rose slightly. "I guess I'd say I have to see it to believe it, sir," she finally replied.

Cooper stood, buttoning his jacket and gesturing towards the door. "We better get going then."

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><p><strong>T<strong>he ride was short, but soon enough Liz was in an underground garage of an old, empty government building with Cooper, Ressler, and a few other agents. They rode down in an old service elevator, and the doors opened and let them out on a floor buzzing with activity.

Liz gaped.

A small number of the people walking around were dead. Definitely, entirely, absolutely dead. A man in suit dropped a folder and knelt to pick it up. The slightly translucent woman a few steps behind him simply kept going and passed through him. A petite woman walked by engrossed in the content on her tablet while a cup of coffee hovered at her shoulder; eyes never leaving the screen, she reached up and grabbed it to take a sip.

"Welcome to the Morgue," Ressler said as he stepped out of the lift, aware the woman beside him was a little taken aback.

"This is like a scene from X-Men or something," Liz muttered as she followed Cooper over to a work area filled with glass boards, photos and files taped to them. Interspersed here and there amongst the material were photos of the blond man, Red.

"We certainly are a diverse workplace," Cooper noted as he came to stop in front of the boards. "But we're uniquely qualified for the work we do."

Liz looked back at busier area of the floor. "And what's that? Slaying vampires? Hoovering up ghosts?" she cracked.

"If only it was that easy to get rid of the dead," Ressler muttered, darkly.

Cooper shook his head. "We're a clandestine division of the FBI tasked with detecting and apprehending atypical criminals who are operating beyond the reach of our public counterparts."

"We're government ghosts who nab ghosts," summarized the younger man.

She contained the desire to laugh or cry and continued to read the notes on the board, schooling her features into a blank look. This was ridiculous. This was all ridiculous but sadly real. She'd pinched herself earlier on the elevator though, and was very much awake. She had all ten fingers. She could taste the bitterness of the half cup of black coffee she'd poured into her travel mug flying out the door earlier

Liz ran her fingers over her scar and looked over the material on the board closest to her. "So this Re-Red guy, he's one of these ghosts? He's a criminal ghost?"

Ressler nodded. "One of the worst. Had a promising Naval career before his death, a spotless record. A few months after he died, classified intel from projects he'd been involved with appeared on the black market, and over time, it appears he's used a medium who goes by the name of Dembe as his intermediary while he's built himself a criminal empire. Most of the people who do business with him aren't even aware he's dead - they call him the Concierge of Crime."

He tapped on a photo over his shoulder. It was a grainy, black-and-white freeze frame from a security feed. There was a painting floating mid air. "So far, we've only got evidence he's a poltergeist - the typical disembodied voice, items moving seemingly on their own - usually items worth millions that go missing. I've spent five years tracking him down."

Liz debated on voicing her question, but Cooper gave her an encouraging look. "Ask the question, Agent Keen."

So she was adding 'mind readers' to her growing list of people and things that actually existed. "What happens when you catch them?"

"We have ways of containing them. If they don't agree to cough up information, we exorcise them," answered Ressler, who quickly added, "No priests involved. A lot of Latin though."

"Of course," Liz said faintly, feeling more than slightly overwhelmed. She stood a little taller before asking her next question with more confidence than she felt. "And where do I come into this?"

Cooper told her about the medium and the video from earlier that day as they left the floor and took a flight of stairs to another area. The hairs on the back of her neck rose again as they entered a booth full of monitors. Beyond the windows in the room, she could see down into a dimly lit, cavernous space and a large box structure towards the back of the area. Cooper introduced the stick figure of a man working on one of the computers in the booth as Aram Mojtabai.

"Aram built the Box down there," the Assistant Director explained. "We believe that if we can get Red into this building, we can contain him in the Box, detain him in it."

"It's all EM pumps and a lot of stuff you probably don't want to hear about," said Aram dismissively. "Besides, I'm still working on it. Actually sir, while you're here, can I ask you something?"

Liz stepped closer to the window to afford them privacy. She crossed her arms and peered down at the Box and its contents. It was hard at first, with the lighting in it, but she leaned a little closer to the glass and knew for certain that she wasn't seeing things.

She interrupted the conversation behind her. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you _not_ supposed to be able to see poltergeists?"

Ressler, who had been watching the news feed on a TV screen, turned to her with a curt nod, waiting to see where she was going with the query.

Liz jerked a thumb beyond her shoulder. "Then why can I see him in the Box?"

"Sorry, who?" Aram asked eyes comically wide and eyebrows high.

"It's that guy from the photo. Raymond Reddington is-"

She never got to finish the sentence. The power cut out. The glass of the windows in the booth shuttered as a sudden gust of wind rushed through the space below. Everyone grabbed onto the nearest piece of furniture when the whole room shook.

Just as quickly as it started, it was over, and the occupants of the room were all looking at one another for validation.

"Son of a bitch," yelped Ressler, pointing at the closest monitor showing the cage below. "He _is_ in the Box."

Cooper looked from the screen to the window, and Liz was now very certain he could see the figure as well from the way his lips thinned.

In the Box, Raymond Reddington smiled at the camera.

"It's showtime."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Own nothing. Trying to fly through these chapters but I'm not flying fast enough. Clearly this didn't finish in time for Halloween. Sorry! **

**After this chap, we'll start straying from canon.**

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><p><strong>H<strong>ow he made the old rusty chair look like a throne, Lizzie wasn't sure.

Even without the cameras and people watching from above, descending the stairs towards him in the shadowy space made her weary. The man sat waiting, watching her, separated from her only by the structure of the Box. The distance now dwindling, it didn't feel like much of a cage around him.

Liz took a seat in the chair facing him, trying hard to focus on him and not the frantically blinking lights behind him that she could see through him. He must have noticed, because he snapped his fingers and the overhead lights sparked and dimmed. Now, in the darker room, he looked more solid.

Apart from the faint, pearlescent glow of course.

"Agent Keen," he drawled, and she wondered if this was what it looked like to see a shark smile at you under the water. "What a pleasure."

Lizzie put on her most clinical, polite but removed smile possible. "Well, I'm here."

Red leaned back in his seat, seeming to take her in more closely than before. She ignored his attempts to throw her off kilter with a statement about the changes to her appearance, and tried to navigate the conversation to fertile territory.

"You already have a medium. You practically tortured another one to make your request. Why involve me? I'm nothin' special," she declared with a subtle shrug.

"Oh," Red said with a knowing laugh. "I think you're _very_ special."

There was something about the tone of his voice that had her looking him square in the eye. He _knew_. He'd somehow known about her ability despite all of those years trying to hide it.

And then he launched into info on a man named Zamani. He'd apparently been mentioned by the medium hours earlier, and information had been pulled to figure out what he might be talking about. Before Liz had come down to talk to him, they'd prepped her as best as they could.

"Ranko Zamani's been dead for six years," she countered, and he laughed.

"I've been dead a hell of a lot longer, and it hasn't stopped me...granted, I'm a _very_ special case, but I'm not alone. Death is boring. Might as well make it interesting."

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><p><strong>B<strong>efore she knew it, she was in the back of an SUV, whisking away a little girl to prevent her from being kidnapped.

And then there was the child's screaming, and smoke, and gunfire, and the weight of a charm bracelet on her wrist and on her conscience, and she was back at the edge of the Box, staring down the young man who watched her with the Cheshire smile, who knew all along what would happen, who might have even been behind the attack and kidnapping.

She gritted her teeth when she asked for his help, knowing it would put her in a horrible situation.

He wanted a trade - info on her scar for info on the ghost.

He jerked his chin in her direction, dropping his eyes to her curled hands for only a second before returning his gaze to her face.

"May I see it?" he asked. It was the sort of question a curious child would ask, and it sounded wrong coming from someone his age...worse still from a dead man. After a second, a smirk twitched across his lips before he continued languidly "I'd show you my mine, but one of those pesky rules about death even I can't shirk is the whole 'You're stuck wearing what you died in' thing."

Liz watched him, looking for some sign he'd step down from the request but he wasn't budging; he was patiently waiting, watching her. So she stepped closer, uncurling her fingers, refusing to drop eye contact or let him see how uncomfortable she felt exposing this to him.

He looked at her hand like it was something else. Like art. Like evidence. .

When he reached out to touch her, it took her by such surprise that she didn't move at first - just like she'd seen earlier up on the main floor with her coworkers, she imagined his fingertips would simply pass through. It was an odd move from a man who'd spent more than 20 years taking a dirt nap, like he'd forgotten the fact for a second.

The shock had them both jumping back, and Liz clutched her hand to her chest, staring wide eyed at him while the tingling

"Did you - did you know that would-"

"-No," he responded, voice thick as he shook his head and flexed his fingers, staring at her own. It felt like touching a doorknob after trekking across carpet in socks. Just a little zap, really, no sense of touch aside from that, but not expected at all.

He'd felt it. There was a sheen to his eyes, like they were watering.

She swallowed, trying to fix her suddenly dry throat, as she got back to her reason for visiting their ghost in residence.

"Tell me about the men who kidnapped the girl. Give me more details."

He may have had years to school his unaging features into heavy-lidded, bemused blase in most situations, but now he swallowed unnecessarily and shot her a look accusing betrayal before demanding to see what they had on Zamani already.

And he pushed her. Taunted her. Forced her to stop thinking like a cop, to think like a criminal, and then to think like a criminal who had already died and what he'd want revenge for, fearless of bullets or pain.

"Dying makes him dangerous," he reminded her.

He looked pleased when she realized that the kidnapping was retribution for his own death, and the death of his own child. Looked even happier as he insisted on being let out of the Box, that he be allowed to work with Dembe once again, and no, Lizzie still needed to stay on.

He friggin _waved _at her when they moved him to a hotel to keep up appearances.

They found more of Zamani's group, and Liz took the opportunity to go home. To see her nice, normal husband and pretend she wasn't being forced to work in some sort of mash up of Touched By An Angel and a police procedural show.

That was when she saw the pink balloons,and the paperwork and the poster, and for a moment, it seemed like she'd have a world filled with a family to escape to at the end of her bizarre days.

That was when she found her husband pinned to the wall by something unseen, and she saw his blood on the wallpaper they'd just finished putting up.

Away from any EM pumps, like those used at work to make her new, ghostly coworkers visible to her - the reason, they'd figured, that she could see Red was that he was different, had some kind of connection to her and they were all frantically trying to figure out what it was - Zamani was demanding answers from her about how she knew he was still around, how the FBI was able to track down his mortal associates. And she could see him, easily tracking his movement around the room as she told him she didn't know much, just about the girl

"My friend Red is always going on about you. I expected more," he complained.

Her lack of answers had the dead man sending the carving knife from the steak on the dinner table across the room and into her husband's side. He offered her a choice: save her husband or save hundreds, and it wasn't even a choice as she rushed to her husband's side, the other man vanishing.

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><p><strong>T<strong>he ambulance arriving and the race to the hospital were a blur to her, but after only an hour or so in his room, she looked up to see two Toms, one still in a medically induced coma, the other staring down at himself.

She shouldn't have been able to see him.

Her frantic movement to check the heart monitor to ensure he was still alive caught his attention.

"I'm not dead?" he asked and she shook her head, trying to be calm for him, to assure him.

"No, babe, no you're not. It's okay. This is temporary." She remembered what the agents posted outside the door had told her earlier, when they were warning her about this potentially happening. For a brief second, a selfish one, she'd hoped he'd wake up with the ability too, just so she wasn't alone with her secret in their marriage.

They'd told her otherwise.

"You won't even remember this," she told him with a forced smile.

When she couldn't take it anymore, she excused herself, promising him she'd be back in the morning, and stepped out into the hallway. The house was still a mess, and she'd need to clean the blood up. Take down the wallpaper. Replace the carpet.

Caught up in her thoughts, Liz nearly walked into someone passing by in the hallway and immediately apologized to the woman. Something caught her eye and she looked back up at her.

Her heart sank when she could see the fire exit _through_ the woman, who was clearly distraught. Her head was at a funny angle, like her neck was broken…

It _was_ broken.

"Where am I?" the woman asked, teary-eyed. "Everyone here has been ignoring me, except for you. What's wrong with me?"

Words caught in her throat, Liz retreated, running blindly towards the elevators on the other end of the hallway, noticing in one room a young man in a soldier's uniform at the bedside of an old woman. A child was crying by the elevator, demanding that someone tell her what was going on. They were both dead. She knew somewhere deep in her gut.

Liz jammed frantically at the elevator button, closing the door as quickly as she could, and squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to _stop_, just stop seeing them. Wasn't that exactly what she'd done when she was younger? It worked then. It should have worked again.

"Why won't you talk to me?"

Liz jumped and opened her eyes, seeing the woman with the broken neck from earlier standing in front of her.

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><p><strong>I<strong>t took her twenty minutes, but she talked the woman down from hysteria in her car. Promised she'd pass a message to her son - she hadn't seen him in years, wanted him to know she loved him, she understood his distance, and that hidden in the sleeve of her Bing Crosby album was info on a bank account her husband didn't know about - and then woman was gone. Simply gone. She'd made a tiny comment about a light, and had vanished from her car, leaving Liz with a Starbucks receipt in her shaking hand, covered in info for a man she'd just promised to track down.

She would do it, of course. But at that current moment, her shock and confusion were curdling into anger.

She was _fine_ before Red touched her. She was normal.

Liz knew where they were putting Red up - why a ghost needed a hotel room was beyond her - and she drove to the place with the sort of pin-point, red-at-the-edges vision that meant getting there in one piece was a bit of a miracle.

She flashed her badge at the agents serving as guards at the door, lied and said Red had requested to see her, and stormed into the hotel room.

He was sitting at the dining room table, a newspaper in front of him, a pen poised over the crossword.

"What did you do to me?" she demanded as she came into the room.

"You look like you want to stab me with my pen," he observed, sounding a little delighted with the idea.

"Because I do. I really fucking do, Red," she seethed. "Who gave you the right to come into my life - my husband is in a coma, he's walking around the hospital like _you_, like a ghost - and you have broken everything about me I've spent _years_ fixing. What do you think-"

"-Nothing was ever broken about you, Lizzie," the dead man cut her off with a frown. He went back to the crossword puzzle, avoiding her gaze. She could see he was trying his best to make it appear as if he was holding the pen, making it move like it was really his hand propelling it across the paper.

Control. He was trying to keep control.

No one had been able to put him back yet. Then again, she was the one that had helped him shimmy just a little to this side of the veil. He'd wanted that. He'd _known_ she could do that.

In that moment, she realized she could use his name to assert power, just like he had been doing to her.

Liz said his name three times.

He grew more transparent, but she could still clearly see him. The pen clattered to the table and he glared up at her, his lips pressed together with displeasure.

A guard outside the suite started knocking on the door shouting her name and demanding to know where Red went.

Liz slammed her hands on the table, leaning closer to him.

"You want to be seen? You want your dramatic little monologues to be heard?" she waited for half a second to continue, watching his lips to see if he'd say anything. "Then don't piss me off. Your plan seems to hinge on my continued cooperation, and if I were you, I'd be praying that my husband pulls through."

Cooper showed up impressively fast after that, demanding that she call him back, and the entire time she received her dressing down, Red sat in the chair, arms crossed, clearly enjoying it. Begrudgingly, she repeated his name three more times, and didn't even wait to be dismissed before trudging back out of the hotel.

She went home and cleaned the dining room until her hands were stinging and raw from the work and the chemicals, and then stumbled her way into the shower, letting it get to that perfect near-scalding temperature she needed it at.

Even as she tried to allow the water to hit her skin and drown out thoughts of the day she'd just experienced, it didn't work. Her mind wandered, processing what had taken place. The fear of being surrounded by the SWAT team, that giddy happiness she'd left with in the morning in anticipation of the meeting with the adoption agency, the feel of her husband's blood under fingers…

The look on Red's face when he told her nothing was broken.

Hudson's sudden barking startled her out of her thoughts, and she called out to her pet, hoping her voice would calm him down. He was still skittish from the-

Wait. No. She couldn't keep ignoring things like that. Not anymore.

Liz peeked around the edge of the shower curtain to see if anyone was in the bathroom with her. She was confronted by a room full of steam and a dog barking in the doorway.

She didn't push back the curtain until the towel was secure around her chest. The movement in the mirror's reflection caught her attention, and the vinyl bunched in her fingers as she stared at the words spelled out before her.

She recognized the handwriting from the note they'd showed her at the Morgue. Bold, capital letters. Hasty. Demanding.

_DON'T TRUST YOUR HUSBAND._

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><p><strong>T<strong>he next day was a whirlwind of activity, but they got the girl back. They exorcised Zamani, and Liz had the opportunity to sit down with Cooper behind closed doors and talk to him about what had happened in her home the night before.

"He thinks I can be easily manipulated. The man obviously doesn't know me very well," she concluded, exhaling heavily. "This is only the beginning, I'm sure. I had a priest come and bless my home this morning. I'll start burning sage. It's worked for me in the past. It should work again."

She steeled herself for the next part of the conversation. "As much as this work is the _last_ thing I want to do, it's obvious Red won't work with you unless I'm involved. But I think I could do something...I think it's why he wants me here. I think he wants me to profile these criminals we're handling, the ones he's telling us about."

Cooper considered her proposal for a second, and her confidence started to falter slightly, until he nodded affirmatively.

"Consider yourself the Morgue's first Paranormal Criminal Profiler, Agent Keen. Now let's go talk this over with the asset."

Red appeared in the Box as she was speaking his name the third time. She kept her voice and her gaze steady as she walked towards him.

"I'll agree to continue working with you if you stay out of my home, and stay out of my personal life. You will call me by my name, Agent Keen, or I will call you by _your_ name."

Red seemed to give the offer consideration for a moment, but Liz remained aloof and still, waiting.

"That sounds...predictable, but I can agree to your terms. Li-Pardon, Agent Keen," he said, making her name sound X-rated in the process, "I can't wait to start working on the next name on my list."

Liz gave him a disbelieving look. They'd anticipated bringing him cases to see if he had intel, not the other way around. "You have a list."

"Of course," he crowed. "I called it the Blacklist. That sounds exciting - and appropriately funereal."

He laughed, giving her a knowing look. "We're gonna make a _great_ team."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: I don't own any of this. There are some lines from the Anslo Garick episode in this chapter that are slightly altered.**

**The 8tracks mix got a little update. You can find the link on my profile.**

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><p><strong>A<strong>nd damn him, they did make a good team. He was frustratingly evasive, clearly working towards his own, unknown interests, but the safety of the country benefited from his current whimsy and the names he provided from the Blacklist continued to be ticked off, arrested, detained, killed, or exorcised.

And Liz was good at finding what made their targets tick. She found the chinks in their armor like it was nothing.

After a second and then a third incident took place where Red suddenly appeared in her home and she confronted him about it, she discovered two things: 1) His visits coincided with her thinking of him, and 2) he couldn't lie to her.

Clearly, he was frustrated with the second issue, because more than once, she watched him wind up for some epic mistruth and watch the feigned disdain slip into place, only to see his surprise when his mouth was saying the opposite of what he intended.

At first, she took extreme pleasure in forcing him to pop up when she needed him on a case, or made sure she was the only one in the room if she asked a question she needed answered. But it was clear to her he hated being a puppet on strings, and after one spectacular event where she finagled info on a target out of him that he hadn't intended to give her, intel that might threaten to reveal his work with the FBI, they had a stare down for a moment that stretched far too long.

Liz watched him, challenging, defiant, angry with the situation, and the expression was reflected back at her.

He popped out of her office that time, all on his own.

He was less domineering after that, instead seeking her assistance, asking for her help with cases and targets. On occasion, doors would suddenly open if her arms were full, and chairs were graciously pulled out.

"Don't look now," Ressler warned her one day after Red had been particularly complacent. "But I think our Ghost with the Most might have a crush on you."

At least he wasn't trailing after her like a kicked puppy.

Tom had been clingy since his time in the hospital, and while she initially had excused it as trauma from what had happened to him - he believed what he remembered about Zamani to be half-hallucinated, and she let him think that, since he woke up with no recollection of his time wandering around during his coma - she was starting to grow tired of his near-constant complaints about how much time she spent at work. She knew the typical reactions of victims to aggressive assault, and he wasn't showing them.

To be perfectly honest, it seemed like the only times he was affected by what had happened was when he accusatorily brought it up in an argument with her. Her decision to stop pursuing adoption was also a frequent source of fights at home.

She jumped at the chance to take any assignment that meant staying overnight someplace away - the back of a surveillance van, a shitty hotel, a chair in a warehouse, it didn't matter. She knew she was avoiding a problem, a big one, but she wasn't sure how to fix it, or if it could be fixed. She was afraid she was losing her small piece of 'normal' and didn't know how to stop it.

Of course it was Red that noticed first. She anticipated some sort of comment on his part, something that would help grow the seed of mistrust already there in her marriage, or at least for him to say 'I told you so', but it never came.

Liz had volunteered to go over surveillance footage from their current case, thoughtless, long work that required her to brew a pot of coffee and hunker down in front of a computer in a tiny closet of a room for the night to watch hours of footage from a security camera in Italy.

The fresh, steaming cup of coffee hovering just to her left at eye level caused her jump in her seat.

"You know, I have a series of homes around the area I like to haunt - pardon the pun," he informed her, leaning against the doorway, hands in his pockets, watching the screens with the sort of innocent curiosity that was anything but. "If you ever need the use of one, it's a simple matter of Dembe making a phone call - or I could text. That's a new trick of mine."

Liz rolled her eyes, crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair, still watching the footage. "Yes, I figured that out after the 'Boo' text I got. I was a little surprised you didn't go all out and throw the ghost emoji in there, too."

Red sighed dramatically. "Touch screens are so difficult. I'm stuck with a flip phone for now."

She reached out for the coffee, gave it an experimental sip, and found it had been prepared to her liking. She gave him a slight, appreciative dip of her head before pointing out, "You didn't have a problem with my GPS."

There was a pause before he answered. He gave a small, deprecating laugh. "You give me far too much credit, Agent Keen."

She ignored that - it was probably just another attempt at lying to her that was ruined by whatever connection they had. Admitting weakness went against the entire persona that he kept.

Liz went back to reviewing the CCTV loop with a sip of the coffee.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that telltale glow and laughed, twisting to see him now 'seated' in the desk chair next to her.

"It's not like your legs get tired."

He shot her an affronted look. "I could just _hover_, but I've been told that's _unsettling_ for most people and _weird_."

Liz made an exasperated noise. "That was _one_ time! You were making the witness nervous."

"One time is enough."

They settled into comfortable silence, watching the footage slightly sped up on the double monitors.

With no audio to pay attention to, her mind wandered.

If he were alive, she'd run the risk of brushing shoulders with him.

If he had been alive, they were so close in the tiny room she would have felt his body heat. Smelled his cologne - there was a faint whiff now and then, some scent she knew but couldn't identify from her childhood. Something common, then.

He shifted in the seat, moving to face her. He tilted his head to the side. It was like he knew what she was thinking, and not for the first time.

Part of her didn't want to know if that was true.

"How did you die?" The question came out quietly, gently, but she found herself to be truly curious. "Before you say 'You should have read that in my file,' I'll remind you my security access is restricted."

He frowned. "They don't trust you?"

"Something about a criminal mastermind ghost having some knowledge of me and asking to work with seems to rub the higher-ups the wrong way."

Liz repeated the question.

His face was wiped clean of emotion. She watched the play of his jaw working, like he was trying to figure out how to answer her without a lying but also without the truth. She paused the video with a fairly vicious tap at the spacebar on her keyboard.

"That's like asking a woman what she weighs," Red chided her.

"That's a bullshit, sexist answer."

Liz waited, arms crossed on her chest, the warm mug resting in one hand. She took a sip with a patient look. She wasn't going anywhere. They both knew she could call him right back if he left.

He seemed to deflate a little. "Asphyxia," he declared, staring at her, daring her to look away, to back down, shaping the words in a way that bared his lower teeth more than normal, like the hint of a snarl. "The best way I could have gone, I think. Waste of a face like mine, otherwise."

Liz let her head rest on the side wall behind her, giving him silence, allowing him to continue if he wanted.

He didn't. The spacebar moved up and down, and the video continued to play once more.

The quiet grew, expanding between them. She wasn't sure what to say, felt like he had more to add to that statement, and it wasn't her turn to speak yet.

A few minutes later, he exhaled heavily, purely for effect, before saying, "If I were still alive, I'd be in my fifties."

The comment came out before she even gave it much thought. "Well you look good for your age," she muttered flatly, not moving her eyes from the screen.

The resulting higher-pitched giggle was so entirely unexpected she had to whip her head around to make sure it was coming from him.

It had. His shoulders moved with the sound and something about the smile on his lips triggered an upward twitch at the corner of hers.

"Agent Keen, you never cease to surprise me," he finally said.

It was that strange time of night where she found herself the most open, the most vulnerable. The tension of the day was gone and tension was broken between them. They went back to watching the footage for a while in relaxed quiet.

"Have you ever been to Perugia?"

Liz gave him a dubious look. "You've been haunting me for years, I think you already know the answer to that - just...just launch into your monologue already." She punctuated the command with a permissive wave of her hand.

"I do not...mean to monologue." Halfway through the sentence, the words were strangled, and she knew his defensive, initially intended answer was a lie. They both did.

"Perugia," she prompted, before he had time to dwell and grow angry.

"Like you even want to hear it," he muttered darkly. If he hadn't spent decades trying to make himself look older than he was, she imagined he'd be pouting.

"I do," she quickly assured him. His eyebrows flew upwards into his dated, floppy bangs and immediately, her eyes widened, earnest. "No, really. I _do_."

It seemed to smooth his pride. His shoulders relaxed slightly. "Perugia is gorgeous - you'd love it. Breathtaking views of the Umbrian countryside. This street in the security feed? There's countless more. They have this incredible jazz festival. Dembe and I make a point of going every year...and the EuroChocolate festival! It's positively decadent, sinfully so."

"Can you even taste the food?" she asked with a light laugh.

Her mirth died a quick death when his responding smile was a crooked, bitter thing, and she almost wanted to apologize for asking the question.

"No," he said. "The wrong side of the death certificate means no taste and no smell. They're a close second and third on the list of things I miss."

The brunette woman watched the change in him, saw he'd grown serious, somber.

"What's number one?"

For the briefest of moments, Red's eyes flitted to her scarred left hand, but he looked away and swallowed, some residual nervous response.

"Touch," he replied, voice tight. "I can touch other ghosts, but real touch, that's something I miss."

He was looking in the direction of the screen, but at something beyond them when he continued. He ran his hand through his hair and it stood on end for a half-second before returning to it's feathered normal appearance. He looked young and yearning and vulnerable.

"God," he laughed. "I'd be such a hedonist if I was still alive, if I knew what I knew. I have this list of things I'd want, things I'd probably do...just about anything to experience."

She knew she was at some sort of edge, a tipping point between bizarre, professional friendliness and...something more, something more personal. Liz took the step over the line anyway and asked "Like what?" in a voice that was a little hoarse.

Red closed his eyes. "I'd want to feel the surge as ten racehorses go thundering by. A meal in Paris, at L'Ambroisie, at the Place des Vosges. I want another bottle of wine. And then another. I want the warmth of a woman and a cool set of sheets. I want to stand on the summits and smoke Cubans and feel the sun on my face for as long as I can. Most of all I want to sleep. I want to sleep like I slept when I was a boy. Give me that, just one time."

There was a tightness in her chest and an itch in her fingertips, like they wanted to curl around his in a gesture of comfort.

Suddenly feeling like they both were a little too emotionally exposed, Liz tried to lighten the mood. "I should just ask you for travel recommendations, since you've traveled so much. Tom wants to take me on vacation."

His eye twitched a little as he gave her a grimace masquerading as a close-lipped smile. "There's enough to see and do in DC to entertain you both," he ultimately remarked.

They passed the rest of the time silently, until she found the clip with their suspect wandering by and she dove back into her work. He disappeared for a while, but at one point she looked down and found the mug next to her elbow had been refilled.

She took a moment to enjoy the taste of the coffee, the bitter and sweet on her tongue, its warmth.

He was there beside her before she even realized the direction of her thoughts.

"What is it?" he asked her.

"It's…" she trailed off and shook her head, before saying instead. "Thank you."

"Think nothing of it, Agent Keen," was his brusque reply.

Liz bit her lip for a second, debating on whether not to say it.

"Red."

"Yes?"

"You can call me 'Liz.'"


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N Still don't own any of it. **

**Warning: A little bit of sex and violence this chapter.**

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><p><strong>A<strong>ram knocked on her door, but didn't enter. "Are you coming?"

Liz dropped the folder she'd been reading through back onto her desk. "Go where?"

"It's Meera, she's asked to go to the Room."

The seated woman stared at him blankly. Even though she had been tentatively accepted by most of the others in the Morgue, there were a lot of things she was still left out of. Her connection with Red had many coworkers holding her at arm's length.

Not Meera, though. The two were fairly close, and Liz admired the hell out of how easily she'd adapted to their division. The CIA agent shared Cooper's ability to determine when someone was lying, and after it was discovered, they'd transferred her to the Morgue.

"The Room?" Liz echoed as she pushed out of her chair.

Aram gave her an apologetic look - he was probably one of the friendliest of her coworkers, although it may have had something to do with the fact that she actually listened when he explained his work, or that she kept Red from terrorizing him. His technopath skills were incredible, but he fairly skittish about anything involving the dead.

"No one told you - sorry! We've got a room here where you can place something you'd come back for if, you know…" he flapped his hand, ducking his head. When it was obvious she didn't know what he was trying to imply, he huffed. "When you die, it's a way of sticking around. Unfinished business. I mean, the whole 'coming back as a ghost' thing isn't an exact science, and it doesn't work with everyone, but it seems to help."

Before long, a small group of agents were assembled in the Room, a meeting room down a deserted hallway with one long conference table in the center of it, filled with an interesting variety of items. There were several unfinished puzzles, with just one or two pieces missing. There were photos and keys and folded up notes. She spied an old copy of a comic book as well.

Meera had only asked a few people to come with her - the process was very private, Liz realized, and she was touched that she was included - and she pulled a baggie out of her pocket.

There were two locks of hair in it. Small bits of hair, dark and glossy, with rubber bands wrapped around them. Meera placed it reverently on the table.

"I'd come back for my kids," she announced. "I'd come back to make this world safer for them, just like I do now."

The process took only a few minutes, but it felt official, and the group decided to go on their lunch break together for the most morbid celebration ever. Liz was walking along with Aram when something on the wall caught her eye.

"I'll catch up," she promised him as she slowed to a stop.

There were a series of frames on the wall, certificates, news clippings, and photos, all framed and almost all hung straight.

One of those photos, a little faded with time, showed a group of men around a folding card table. The room must have been dark, because the flash caused everyone in the photo to stand bleached and bright in contrast to the dark wood paneling in the background.

She recognized Director Cooper, much younger and happier, and Raymond Reddington was standing next to him, an arm around his shoulders, but it was the man on Red's other side that caught her attention.

She pulled the frame off the wall and stalked towards the Box.

Red had interfered with a sting operation the day before, personally sending a text to their target, and even while he'd explained he was trying to gain the man's confidence to make it easier to gain the intel they needed, Cooper had ordered her to call him into the Box, and say his name three times. He'd been more than slightly pissed with her, but she'd explained she was doing her job, the job he'd demanded she do in the first place.

The heels of her boots striking bare concrete as she approached him echoed loudly. Liz thrust the frame out in front of her, like a cross in one of those old vampire flicks.

"What the hell is this?" she hissed.

Red, who had been hovering on his back just above the cot in the Box, sat up to squint at the photo. "Harold is in the photo, too," he pointed out, like a kid throwing a sibling under the bus.

"I figured I'd get a _better_ answer out of you."

"That is true," he said far too casually. "For someone who knows when anyone else is lying, he has the best damn poker face I've ever seen."

Their fierce, locked gaze lasted for only a few seconds before Liz's shoulders slumped, and she pulled the photo to her chest.

"Why didn't you tell me you knew Sam?"

Red stood, moved to the front of the Box, passing a hand through his hair as he leaned against the structure. "I still _know_ him. That's not past tense...He just hasn't been able to see me."

Liz opened her mouth, countless questions all sitting at the tip of her tongue, but she shut her mouth when Red tipped his head to the side and glanced in the direction of one of the cameras.

Right. She forgot about them in that moment of confusion and anger.

Her Dad was a retired magician, Sam Scott, the Psychic, a man who had experienced some popularity in the Midwest years earlier. He still was recognized from time to time while he was out buying groceries. He had twitter followers.

She _knew_ her father didn't have her ability, so how did he know both Cooper and Red? She wanted answers. Honest ones.

She sighed. Cooper had told her to bench Red until they needed him on a case, and it would be recorded if she turned off the EM pumps, or called him to her somewhere else. Liz wouldn't be able to chalk it up to an accident if it happened, since she'd gotten better at _not_ thinking about him.

That was a lie: She'd gotten better at _stopping_ herself from thinking about him. She'd gotten better at it because she was thinking about him more often, and thereby had more opportunity to practice clearing her mind. It was some real Jedi shit for her, harder even than forcing herself not to see the dead when she was off-duty.

Because the more time she spent with him, the more she noticed about him. Like just how goddamn smart he was, always several steps ahead of everyone else. Or, much to her complete internal mortification, how long his eyelashes were, despite their light coloring. How well he wore his suit.

She wasn't even going to address the voice.

And noticing those things was all fine and good (okay, it totally wasn't) when she was in a room with him - and he'd shoot her some knowing, flirty glance which only just helped to confirm her growing suspicions that he was somehow aware of what she was thinking - but she had to try very hard not to think about him at home, with Tom. Or really any other time.

He was watching her expectantly, eyes shining and the hint of a smirk on his lips, resting his head on the forearm running along the frame of the Box, and Liz suddenly realized she was openly staring at him.

She cleared her throat, blinking rapidly. "Aram's probably looking for me," she said, excusing herself quickly.

Back at her desk, she ran her fingers over her scar, and trailed them up to her wedding ring.

She was married. _Married_. To Tom Keen. But honestly she wasn't sure how long even that was going to last. They were constantly on one another's nerves, and two nights ago, she all-out told him there would be no baby and no vacation in the near future and he hadn't spoken to her since.

Tonight was a parent-teacher conference night. She could take Hudson for a walk and then unwind in peace. Think in a silence not ruined by her husband sulking in some corner of the house.

She was overdue for a visit to her Dad. She'd tell him then, about thinking about leaving Tom. Ask him about the photo. Find out what her connection was to...to the photo. That worked for her. Think about the photo and not who was in it.

Liz went home that night and smothered Hudson in affection, who could barely contain his excitement at her behavior. Their walk was longer than it typically was, but she didn't mind. The November air was crisp, and it helped clear her head.

Energy now burned, Liz and her dog made their way back home; seeing no lights on and no car at the street was a blessing. She let out a long breath as she opened the door and let them into the quiet.

A bath, that's what she was going to take. An honest-to-god, completely unnecessary and steaming hot bath. She'd crack open a bottle of wine and put on one of her CDs, one of the ones Tom hated. She was going to enjoy her privacy.

Liz couldn't help the appreciative moan that escaped her lips when a short time later, she sank into the hot, aromatic water in her bathtub. A towel behind her head, her hair up in a clip, she slid her arms along the sides of the tub and closed her eyes.

Who needed a vacation when this was right in her house waiting for her?

Nina Simone sang about Lilac Wine from her old CD player on the counter as Liz sipped her own, which she was resting beside the tub on the stool with the CD player remote next to it. She didn't feel like dealing with one of the wine glasses, so she'd poured it into a Solo cup leftover from their housewarming party. Maybe classless, but she wouldn't have to wash it when she was done.

What would Red thi-No, no couldn't think like that. She took a furious sip and dropped her head back again. She didn't care what anyone thought about how she was drinking her half-decent wine. She needed to relax. Unwind.

Making sure she definitely had the house to herself by pausing the music for a second with the remote, she strained to listen for any sign of her husband or the other person known to pop up suddenly in her day, and decided that yes, she was alone.

Liz let one hand slide down from the edge of the tub and under the water's surface.

She couldn't remember that last time she'd had a good orgasm, a good see-stars and curl-your-toes one. She couldn't even remember the last time she and Tom had actually had sex - it had been weeks, almost a month. She could remember what she'd had for dinner every night for the past week (mostly), but she couldn't remember the last time she and her husband had fucked.

Her eyes opened and she stared at the ceiling above the tub and let out air between her pursed lips. She couldn't even masturbate without needing to remind herself to focus.

Determined, she shut her eyes again and let her mind wander as she touched herself, tried to replace her hand with someone else's in her mind's eye - not Tom, just a generic, attractive -

Immediately, her brain supplied the memory of Red passionately describing a painting earlier that week. She could stare at his hands for hours, they were mesmeriz-

"Agent Keen, I know it's hard not to thi-"

Liz yelped. Her eyes flew open in panic, finding Red already there and staring at her, gaping and just as shocked really, and she grabbed at the edges of the tub, then mindlessly threw the remote at him before scrambling to cover herself with a towel before she remembered there was a quicker way of fixing the situation.

"Reddington, Redd-"

The door to the bathroom flew open.

Hudson was barking at her husband's heels as he entered the room. Red took his time turning to look in Tom's direction, which was unfortunate because Tom was already pulling out a 50 caliber brushed chrome Desert Eagle and firing it at him.

Nothing happened, of course, because Red was a ghost, and already dead. The bullet flew into the wall and cracked the tiling.

Tom had told her he'd remembered nothing of his time in a coma. He _shouldn't_ have remembered any of it. The only way he would have remembered was if…

He was looking directly at Red.

"You lied to me."

Tom's focal point moved from Red to his wife, and after he blinked, it softened, his eyes widened.

"Lizzie, this is for your own good. I need you to trust m-"

"You lying son of bitch!" she shouted, and completely mindless of her current state of undress, launched herself out of the tub at him, grabbing the old CD player and swinging it at his arm. Surprise on her side, the gun was knocked out of his grip, but her wet feet on the bare tile worked against her.

Tom spun her around, getting her in a choke hold.

"Lizzie, you need to calm down."

She stumbled, trying to get a foot behind him, trying to trip him at worst, hopefully throw over her shoulder, but it wasn't working. His forearm continued to press at her throat and she clawed at his skin.

"I would if my husband wasn't trying to _choke_ me," she ground out.

The hair dryer suddenly levitated off of the counter and sailed at Tom's head. He jerked his head to the side to avoid it, but Liz saw both things at once: the murderous intent on Red's face, and in the mirror, she saw the reflection of the blow dryer returning to bludgeon the back of Tom's head.

Hudson chose that moment to get underfoot. Tom started to trip, and his grip on Liz loosened as he fell into her from behind. The tub was too far away for her to reach for to stop her fall as the floor tiles came towards her face in a dizzying rush.

Vaguely, she was aware of Red yelling her name. He was reaching out to her, but she saw the fear on his face, the realization that he couldn't stop what was about to happen.

It didn't hurt as much as she thought it would when her head smacked against the tile. Almost immediately, Tom started to flip her over on her back, to grab at her hands. The room spun, but she noticed he'd grabbed up the cord of the hair dryer and she tried to send a message to her hands to _move_, damn it _move_, but they weren't listening to instruction.

And then suddenly Tom was yelling, and gone. There was a thud somewhere else in the house. It sounded like it was at the bottom of the stairs.

Hudson was barking at her but she was very aware she couldn't really move - she remembered then that one of her knees at hit the floor first. If she wasn't so disoriented, she probably would be able to feel if it was broken or not.

"Liz, Lizzie, talk to me."

She hadn't even realized she had closed her eyes. It took a huge effort to lift her eyelids.

Red was kneeling over her, frantic. "Can you hear me?"

She groaned. Felt nauseous. She was flat on her back but the floor was tilting under her.

She tried to warn him she was about to blackout but she wasn't sure if she got the words out. Again, he reached out for her, his hand, so transparent in the bright light of her bathroom coming close to her face as he repeated her name.

The pain in her head bloomed into the flames of her nightmares, the recurring one she knew full well to be an actual, fragmented memory from her childhood. Flames. Heat pressing at her chest making it hard to breathe. Her singed, stuffed rabbit in hand.

And then a hospital bed. Maybe something shifted in her head and allowed her to regain some lost fragment, long buried in the back of her recollection of the incident that had led to Sam adopting her. She probably had thick gauze around her hand, but she couldn't move to see it.

There was a large man in sweats sitting at the end of her bed, watching the TV. The dim twilight on a harbor was visible out the window.

Something wasn't right. The feeling of weightlessness was leaving her in a strange rush, a mutated twin of her fall before, and just as she would have made impact, she was inhaling deeply and staring up at her ceiling again, but it was disorienting, because she was rising towards it. She couldn't feel the tile beneath her.

Ressler was leaning over her. There was definitely someone at her head, and another person at her feet. She could hear the chirp of walkie talkies. Her robe was draped over her - she recognized its weight and felt the pressure of straps at her shoulders and hips. Saw the light blue terrycloth just at the corner of her field of vision. Felt it against her cheek.

"We got him, Keen," he assured her, and she could only look at him, frowning - not frowning actually, that hurt too much. There was something on her forehead preventing her from moving too much, anyway.

Liz closed her eyes again, disappearing into soft darkness behind her eyes.

When she woke up again, she was in a dimly lit hospital bed.

The layout of the room was wildly different from the one she'd dreamed about before. There was a steady beeping from the heart monitor. Her head ached and stung worse than any hangover she'd ever had. She hissed when she tried to sit up, and looked down to notice a cast on her leg.

She remembered struggling with Tom, and falling…

And what had happened before all of that.

The heart monitor started to chirp a little faster.

"Bruising to the throat and elbow, a fractured patella which will require surgery, and a concussion - they ruled out a skull fracture. Your nurse has woken you up a couple times, but you were still pretty out of it."

Red was seated in the chair next to her bed. His ethereal glow didn't look out of place with all of the monitors and other equipment in the room. For a dead man, he looked drained. Exhausted.

"Hello to you, too," she croaked, and when she tried to give him a lopsided smile, her lip cracked and she winced.

His response was quick. The lid on her water cup popped off, and an ice chip made its way to delicately sit against her lip. The cold jarred her, but it also helped her feel a little more awake.

"Tom's in custody. You have a security detail at your door, and I have my own surveillance _actually_ watching your room and not trying to get a better score on Angry Birds," he briefed her. "Tom's not saying anything, but it won't take long for Meera to beat it out of him."

She closed her eyes, exhaling shakily. She remembered what had happened all too well. Her fingers groped around until they reached the ice cube to move it so she could talk. "He tried to...do I remember that right? Was he trying to tie me up?"

When she didn't get an answer, she pried open an eyelid to look over at the chair. Red wasn't looking at her, but she could see the tension of his jaw in his profile.

"Yes," he affirmed for her, gruffly. His fingers flexed on the chair's armrests. "Yes he was."

They were both silent as Lizzie processed that. All those attempts to go on vacation, to make it a 'surprise' for her, to keep her in the dark.

"Do you think he's been trying to kidnap me?" she posited out loud. She didn't wait for an answer, even as tears made her vision swim. "You told me not to trust him. You _told_ me. And I didn't want to listen."

"People don't want to see the worst in their loved ones," he replied. "He wouldn't have tried to use force if…" Red folded his hands in his lap, fidgeting in the seat. "If things had gone the way I'm sure he planned for them to go."

Tom and his motives would have to wait for another time, when her head didn't hurt as much.

She cleared her throat. "Did you text someone at the Morgue?"

He nodded.

If he hadn't been there, well, she probably would still be completely unaware of Tom or his motives. If he hadn't stayed, she would be who knows where with the stranger she'd been married to for two years.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"You're being remarkably calm about all of this," he observed, looking over at her with concern.

"Shock, concussion, and painkillers," she explained with a tired sigh, settling back into the pillows, wiping her wet fingers on the knit blanket. Otherwise, she didn't think she'd be handling everything so well. Liz closed her eyes, feeling exhaustion starting to make her limbs heavy.

Red cleared his throat. "So are we going to talk about...Nina Simone?"

Liz scrunched her eyelids tight. "I'm not _that_ out of it, Red," she answered, pained.

"I can only show up like that if you're thinking about me," he reminded her, but there was a hint of something gleeful about his voice.

He couldn't lie to her, but she could.

"Don't flatter yourself," she mumbled at him.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Don't own it. **

* * *

><p><strong>A<strong>ny normal person looking down at the street from the apartment complex would have seen a solitary brunette walking - well, limping really - towards the black, sleek waiting car and the tall, muscular bald man standing beside it.

They might have recognized her as the newest tenant to the complex, the one with the dog. The one who spent a lot of time on her cellphone, with the odd habit of speaking at the air beside her the entire time she did.

She was on the phone a lot, like now, pinching the phone between her shoulder and ear while swinging her leg in the cast as best she could to hurry along.

Liz greeted Dembe before accepting his offer of assistance as she fell into the backseat, taking the crutches and dropping them to the floor. She happily tossed her cell onto the seat as well.

"Anyone ever ask you about your minutes, Dembe? Because my entire apartment building wants to know what kind of unlimited plan I have since I always have my phone at my ear."

"He mostly speaks _at _me," the man in the driver's seat replied.

"Oh he does the same to me," Liz assured him, a smile attempting to push past her false long-suffering expression. "I just don't have your patience. What's your trick, yoga?"

"Interior decorating."

Liz risked a glance sideways and saw that the car's silent occupant was staring straight ahead, cheeks hollowed and unhappy lips pursed.

"Lighten up," she cajoled.

"I'm dead, not deaf," Red groused. "If I had known introducing you two would lead to this I never would have done it."

"I for one am glad he did," Dembe chimed, and Liz echoed the same sentiment.

Over the last few weeks, Red had learned to get out of the Box, and Cooper had thrown his hands up in defeat. Now, from time to time, she had to answer the Concierge of Crime's calls and hurry to wherever he was. He was only gloating slightly over the turned tables.

Liz had been learning to adapt to the situation, to work at the Morgue, seeing as it didn't seem like it would be changing anytime soon. She was trying to embrace the world she was now fully in. It wasn't like she had any shred of 'normal' to cling to anymore.

Meera and a telepath had spent a lot of time trying to get info out of Tom, but he'd clearly learned to block them. They came out with a drawing, a strange, crooked Y-shaped symbol, something that popped up in Tom's mind. Liz knew the symbol well - it matched the scarring on her hand and wrist, the same scar she'd thought she'd received in the fire.

Liz and Hudson had packed up their things and moved to a smaller apartment following the fight with Tom. It was a new building. Liz even had the apartment blessed. She burned sage from time to time. Red aside, she wasn't taking chances.

She leaned forward between the two front seats. "Thank you, _both_ of you, for driving me to therapy. My alarm clock apparently died last night," Liz shot an accusatory glance in Red's direction, although he only frowned at her in response, "and there was no way I'd have made it to my appointment without your help."

"Anytime," Dembe assured her.

Quite quickly, they pulled up in front of the rehab facility. She was counting the weeks before she'd have the cast off so she wouldn't be stuck on desk duty - a desire that surprised her, since she'd accepted a desk position when she'd transferred to DC originally.

Then again, she'd thought it would be a safer position for a soon-to-be mother.

There were a couple of baby items she'd donated that had been bought, predominantly by Tom, and mostly from situations she realized in hindsight where he'd been attempting to manipulate her. It was such an easy button to push with her, too, the 'I don't know why when you're perfectly healthy you don't want to carry the baby yourself' button. It wasn't like she would have told her husband back then that she didn't want to pass her ability to child.

"You sure you want to go alone?" Red asked as Dembe opened the door for her. His hand reached out to cover hers on the seat between them when she went to grab the phone, and the resulting small jolt had her twitch slightly.

She was going to have to address it if he didn't stop it; she could understand how deprived he was, contact-wise, but she was tired of constantly getting the little jolts, like he'd just shuffled across carpet in socks before touching her. The other day, she had yelped when his hand moved to touch at the small of her back as he was guiding her towards a historic monument while they had been meeting a contact in Moscow. It wasn't even just skin-to-skin anymore, it was any attempt on his part to touch her.

She'd watched him walk right through Ressler recently, just to see the FBI agent who had been originally tasked with finding him shudder. She didn't want to think about what it would feel like if he attempted the same with her.

Yeah, better not to go there mentally.

They still had not discussed the 'Nina Simone' incident. They never would, if she got her way.

She shook out her hand, trying to ignore the zap as she pocketed her cell phone. "So you can make comments and faces that I can't respond to the entire appointment? Again? No thank you. I'm afraid the occupational therapist is going to send me for a PES eval after last time as it is, thank you very much."

She fixed him with a level gaze, partially because she was still trying to determine an answer for herself to her next statement. "Besides, you've figured out your new trick, so why would you want to hang around me anymore than necessary? You don't have to show up when I think about you, and I'm sure there's highly illegal business you have to go attend to."

He kept his face impassive. "So glad you understand, Lizzie," he drawled. He settled back in the seat, raising his arms and resting his head on his entwined fingers; the smile he shot her should have been a felony. "Just because I'm not entirely at your beck and call anymore doesn't mean I don't know when you _are_ thinking about me."

Liz turned away from him to get out of the car and take Dembe's offered hand after he took the crutches from her first, so she didn't have to let him see her shocked expression on her face.

She nearly fell back into the seat when she heard what Red was humming. The first three notes of 'Lilac Wine' left her face feeling hot and she swallowed as she tried to control her reaction. She was a grown woman, there was no reason for this.

"Enjoy your 'me' time!" he called after her before Dembe closed the door.

"Do me a favor Dembe," she asked as they made their way to the front door, "find some holy water and throw a little in his direction. You might have more time for your interior decorating."

Dembe covered his laugh with a feigned cough.

She was only about twenty minutes into her appointment when her cellphone rang, and she immediately hobbled over to it when she heard the Steve Miller Band song start to play.

They had just talked two days ago. She was supposed to call him tomorrow night, after Dancing with the Stars went off. She had put in a request for vacation time once her cast was off, so he wouldn't worry over her.

"Dad? Daddy, what's wrong?" she answered the phone without preamble.

She was happy she was sitting as the conversation continued, since the floor was pulled out from under her.

She knew she was crying openly in the center of the gym area. The therapist was eyeing her nervously. "Um," she sniffed and wiped at her eyes, fingers desperately tapping out the phone number for Dembe, "I'm going to have to call end my session," she informed her.

She hadn't even finished the call when she looked up and saw the person she was ultimately trying to contact.

The halogen light directly above them flickered.

He was standing over her, a worried look on his face and his eyes wide and round as he surveyed her for a moment before jerking his head in the direction of the bathrooms.

Liz excused herself, explained it was a family emergency, and shuffled off.

As soon as the door swung shut, she heard the lock engage behind her, and Red assured her the room was empty before asking "What's wrong?"

She wiped at her cheeks, knowing full well she was probably a snotty, red-blotched mess. "I thought you said you didn't-"

"-You needed me," he cut her off, more than slightly impatient. His hands opened and flexed at his sides. "What's wrong? What is it?"

"It's...it's Dad. He's sick again."

Red actually took a step back from her, surprise and disappointment clearly showing on his face.

"Liz," he simply said, but she could hear the sympathy in it.

She was feeling a little less unhinged. The dead man in front of her was a good actor, but she could practically feel the shock he felt. Good. They were both knocked over by the news.

The woman wiped at her face, taking one last sniff. "You were there for it last time, right? When I visited him?"

He shook his head. "Just once."

Liz frowned as she reached around him for a tissue. "I thought you've always been around."

"Not in a 'Every Breath You Take' kind of way," he refuted, slightly defensive. "I knew about it, yes, but he seemed to be doing fine. I popped back to Saudi Arabia for an arms deal."

"I don't think he's doing fine this time," she told him shakily while pushing her hair out of her face. "My aunt went behind his back and called me, then. I mean, for him to call me, to ask me to come out as soon as I could…"

He watched her, an intense look on his features that made him look older, before saying suddenly. "We'll take the jet."

"Excuse me?"

"The jet. I've got a jet," he paused when someone knocked on the door and Lizzie shouted she'd be another minute. "I'll go tell Dembe to make the call," he licked his lips, watching her again, and something about the earnestness of his expression had her welling up with tears again.

Red still hadn't given her any more information about his connection to Cooper and her Dad. For a while she wondered if all the flirtation, all of the moments they'd shared, they only took place because he needed her to bring him closer to this 'side'. There were times she could see that he needed her and he hated it.

But seeing the look on his face now, it wasn't hate. It was genuine concern.

"Okay," she said quickly, before she lost it again. "Yeah. Thank you."

In the twenty minutes that passed between his disappearing and Dembe's car pulling up at the curb, Liz called the Morgue, and explained the situation to Cooper. She heard the pain in his voice, but he never let on to knowing her father personally.

Liz jiggled her good leg all the way from DC to Nebraska. Neither Red nor Dembe said anything.

She remembered the hospital from last time; she remembered meeting him after one of his appointments in Outpatient Infusion. It was spring, and sunny, and they'd hashed everything out in the pretty garden to the side of the building.

He was an inpatient this time, and she hated that his hospital room would only look out at grey, wintry skies.

His room was on the Oncology Unit. It was a nice room - a big, corner room. A nursing assistant tried to block Lizzie as she made her way to his door.

She pulled the lapel of her shirt out to show the visitor badge. "We're -" Liz stopped, and Red cleared throat. "I'm family."

The young man didn't seem convinced. "There was a reporter earlier today who said the same thing."

Peaking out of his scrub top was a tattoo of a playing card - the one with her dad's logo on it. That was why he cared so much.

"I'm his daughter, Elizabeth Milhoan Keen," she explained, feeling anxiety grow now that she was so close but still unable to get to the man who raised her; her name wasn't very well known by most Sam Scott's fans, but his actual name was. She brandished her badge as well, knowing that should work. "And I'm FBI. So I'm going to have to ask you to let me through."

Abracadabra.

She knocked on the door frame before entering. The lights were off, and the room was twilight dim. Sam Milhoan's eyes were closed, and she felt panic for a second. "Dad?" she asked, voice pitching high.

He opened his eyes slowly. He rolled his head to the side to look at the doorway, squinting.

"Butterball," he crooned, smiling, and Liz gripped the doorjamb. The small shock from Red's hand on her back was grounding; it let her know this was real, and not some horrible nightmare.

She took a deep breath. Smiled even though it hurt her cheeks. "Hey Daddy," she greeted, walking into the room, pulling the chair closer to his bedside.

A glance around the room worried her; there should have been more equipment monitoring him. There was barely anything.

"You're not wearing your wedding ring," he noted, frowning. "I know you said things were tough, but I didn't know they were that bad."

"It was for the best."

Red snorted, keeping his distance at the door, arms crossed as he leaned against the wall.

"What happened to your leg?" Sam asked her.

"It's nothing, it's fine," she quickly assured him. "I'm here for you."

Her father's skin was pale, papery. She noticed his movements were slow. Her throat was tight and her heart beat heavy in her chest. She gripped his fingers like she could anchor him.

And instantly, his worried face transitioned to something close to heartbreak.

"You weren't supposed to find out," he breathed, eyes closing. "You weren't supposed to know about the Morgue."

She sat a little straighter.

"I saw a picture of you with Cooper and Red-" She stopped when he squeezed her hand more tightly and struggled to try to sit up. It triggered a coughing fit that had him falling back into his pillows.

"You know better than to say his name, Butterball. I know they told you about that," he said when he caught his breath. Then he looked at her with that sort of pin-point clarity he typically reserved for his audience during his most dramatic reveals. "You've met him."

Well that explained quite a bit about the success of his show; she'd chalked it up to keen observation skills. She slipped her hand out of his, fearing what else he might see. "Dad, how long have you known about this?"

"Longer than you've been alive," he said with a raspy chuckle. "Oh sweetheart, I should have told you sooner. I shouldn't have waited until now."

"Hey, don't talk like that," she whispered harshly, feeling something like desperation claw up her throat and come out in her words. "What are the doctor's saying? What kind of - do we need to bring in a different doctor, or is there some kind of drug we can get? Dad, whatever it takes, whatever the cost, I'll pay for it."

"It's too far along," he responded, as gently as possible. "They were trying to move me to the hospice unit a couple days ago, but they didn't have a bed. But that's okay. It's probably too quiet up there...after all of these years of listening to people's thoughts, after trying so hard to find quiet, it's kind of funny that I didn't want to die someplace quiet," he chuckled, a scratchy breathy sound.

"I wasn't going to say anything, but then I realized just how _tired_," he breathed the word, like it resonated in every one of his sick cells, "I really was, and I knew I had to call. I want to make sure we get a proper goodbye. That I get to tell you how much I love you before it happens.

"I didn't expect you so soon. This is good, though. This is better. Didn't know if you'd-"

Liz whipped her head around to see what had caught her father's attention enough to distract him mid-sentence.

Her dad was looking right at Red.

Her own horror was reflected back on the dead man's face.

"Jesus Christ," her father exclaimed with a shaky laugh. "I guess this really is it. It's good to see you, Ray."

"No, it's not," the younger man retorted, pushing off the wall and coming closer. Moving away from the brightness of the hallway, Liz could see his eyes were glossy, could see how tightly he held his frame. "But hello anyway."

Hope was slipping out of her tenuous grasp and spiraling away from her.

"I'd tell you to ease up on my kid, Ray," her father said, warmly, "but I saw that she's been giving you the hell you deserve."

Red stuck his hands in his pockets, coming to stand Liz's chair and the foot of the bed. The only reason she knew the smile he flashed his old friend was counterfeit thanks to her time spent with him. He looked at her. "You take after your dad like that."

"No, no, it's all her," Sam said, beaming at her even as he addressed Red. "It's always been. Right from that first moment."

A nurse popped her head in the door, and Liz could see it in her expression, professionally apologetic. She asked if her father needed anything, and he grabbed onto his daughter's hand, raising it a little.

"I've got what I need...Thank you for everything."

Liz knew a goodbye when she saw one.

After the nurse walked away, Sam's eyes slid from his daughter's tear-stained face to Red's. "You need to tell her everything, Red. She deserves the truth."

Liz wiped at her face with one hand, grabbing her father's with the other. "Dad, Dad _you_ can tell me whatever it is. Even if you...even _after_. I'll still be able to see you. Still hear you." She was talking to him, but assuring herself at the same time. "This isn't goodbye, Daddy."

Sam stared at her for a moment, and then opened up his arms wide. "Come here, Butterball."

Liz didn't even care that Red saw the awkward hug or the transition into it. She buried her face in her father's neck, pretended he smelled like cigarettes and his cologne, and not like a hospital. Not like death.

His hand smoothed over her hair, like they did when she was a child. "You were sunshine from the day I laid eyes on you. I've done everything I could to keep you like that - safe, innocent. Spent years trying to keep you from seeing the nasty parts of life. I shouldn't have. I should have helped you better. Taught you not to fear it."

Liz pulled back a little, sitting up but remaining perched on the bed. "Dad, you couldn't have known-"

His eyes were closed when he shook his head. "It was like teaching you to ride a bike," he muttered.

"Training wheels," he sighed. "Never took them off. Should have. But I just saw those things in your head, little bits of what you saw. Wanted to keep you away from that."

His eyes were open, but only a little. "Love you so much, Lizzie."

She didn't want to say it to him then, fearing illogically that saying the words would allow this to continue. "I love you too, Dad."

His eyes shut, and he smiled a little. Liz ran her thumb methodically over his knuckles in her grasp, assuring him she was still there.

His breathing grew more shallow, and he frowned a little. There was less strength in the curl of his fingers around hers, and she held on to every second of that last moment, until his hand was limp, and his chest wasn't moving, and a monitor was giving off one long, official whining note.

She heard a choked sort of noise behind her, twisting to look over her shoulder at Red.

"I guess I really get to say goodbye to you, too, Ray."

Her father stood on the other side of the bed, close to the wall, faint but appearing as he had looked in the bed seconds before. His cooling hand was still in her grip as she looked at his ghost.

The other man nodded, and Liz could see him swallow. "You deserve the rest. Goodbye, Samuel. You lived a long-"

"No!" Liz shouted, springing up off of the bed. "No."

"I watched over her all these years," Sam said, fixing Red with a serious look. "You promised me you'd do the same."

"I have," Red replied, somber, his voice thick. "I will. Always."

"Stop," Liz said, desperately. "Dad you don't have to go. Red, stop him."

The younger man shook his head. "It's his time Liz. There's - you can't see it, but there's-"

Sam had turned to look at something she couldn't see. "It's beautiful," he breathed, before facing his daughter. "Oh sweetheart, please don't be angry with me. I can't...I'm tired. I want to _rest_. I-I have lived a long, happy life, and that's very much thanks to you. I'm proud of you Elizabeth."

"Please," she begged, already knowing it was futile. "Please don't leave me alone." She threw a begging look in Red's direction, but he did nothing and her heart hurt. The faint pang of betrayal stung in her chest.

Her father shook his head. "You aren't, sweetheart. You've never been." He took a small step backwards, smiling.

"I love you, Butterball."

He was gone.

Liz felt gentle hands on her shoulders as she continued to stare at the spot her father had just been in. The nurse was telling her she was sorry, so sorry, but her father had passed.

Someone had turned off the monitor.

Liz felt numb as she stared at her father's body. She felt chilled.

Liz registered the nurse's attempt at a comforting arm rub to go along with the gesture. "He held on for you," the woman told her, like it was supposed to help her, make it easier.

She looked over at Red.

"No, he didn't," Liz whispered coldly.


End file.
